Editor's Note:
The Post of the Month contest for March 2002 was one of the toughest yet, with a crowded field of nominees that were all (in their own ways) excellent. Regrettably, only one post can win the voting each month, but there was definitely more than one candidate that deserved fame, or infamy, as the case may be. Rather than only choosing one and consigning the rest to relative obscurity on Google, I decided to immortalize both the winner and several runners-up on the t.o. archive. Hope no one objects.
--PotM Coordinator

The Devil Went Down to Talk.Origins

Post of the Month: March 2002

[Editor's note: Prior to this post, Dave P. had accepted an offer of a one-on-one debate with a talk.origins contributor who uses the name Aron-Ra, as can be seen in the thread starting here].

Well, as I have discovered, the term Ra is the name given to the "sun god"
that Aron is worshipping. According to my christian background and
relationship with the God of the bible, Aron is getting his inspiration from
the psychopath known in the bible, as satan. So, therefore, by attempting
to show Aron his flaws and deception, I would be basically engaging in a
debate with the devil himself and I refuse to make conversation with the
devil, so my challenge to Aron (who is being inspired by satan), is off.

Monkeys' Uncles

Post of the Month Runner-Up: March 2002

freedomwarrior5000@webtv.net (Freedom Warrior) wrote in message news:<24134-3C8FA526-2@storefull-616.iap.bryant.webtv.net>...
> Greetings everyone. If you don't mind, I would like to ask any of
> you that are experts on biological evolution this question.
> I am aware of the creationist lies about human evolution stating
> that man came from monkeys, which is not true of course. Man did not
> evolve from monkeys and apes, we came from a common ancestor along with
> primates (feel free to correct me if I am wrong).
> The question that I wanted to ask is, what is the name of that
> "common ancestor" where humans and primates evolve from?
>
> Thanks!

You've received some good responses (as well as some predictable
creationist drivel) and I just wanted to add my two scents ('cause
primatologists think us paleoanthropologists stink ;-) In answer to
your question, it depends on which particular MRCA you're looking for.

Phenacolemur jepseni was a Plesiadapiforme that lived about 60 MYA,
and some researchers consider the Plesiadapiformes to be the common
ancestor of all the primates. It's difficult to know for certain
which (if indeed any) of the Plesiadapiforme species was "the"
ancestor, but I personally feel confidently that if it was not P.
jepseni, it was a close relative. The reason for the difficulty in
identifying the species is that the only trait that all primates
share, but that is not shared with other mammals, is the "petrosal
bulla," part of the skull that surrounds the inner ear. In some
non-primates, the bullae fuse to the petrosal in adulthood, so in
order to tell if a questionable species was a primate, juveniles have
to be found. Juveniles don't fossilise as easily as adults, and they
are much less frequently recovered, because of their size (c.f.
Behrensmeyer 1978, Butler and Chatters 1994, e.g.). Still, P.
jepseni juveniles did posess the fused petrosal bulla, suggesting
that they were, or were closely related to, the ancestor of all living
primates.

The arthropoids split from the prosimians some time between 40 and 45
MYA and by the early Oligocene, a few species that could be recognized
as members of our own suborder, Anthropoidea, could be found. Among
the most well studied of these early "monkey-like" Anthropoids are
Apidium and Aegyptopithecus. Apidium was about the size of a
big rat, maybe three pounds at most, and in my opinion, the larger
(10-20 pound) Aegyptopithecus was the more likely of the two to be
ancestral to the living "Old World" primates. The Oligocene is not
particularly rich in primate fossils though, and it's difficult to
make any certain claims.

Remember that at this time, North America (the "original homeland" of
the primates) was still connected to Europe. As the northern
"supercontinent" (which I've heard called "Laurentia") split up, the
ancestors of the New World monkeys were separated from the ancestors
of all of the Old World primates, both monkeys and apes.

By the early Miocene (23-16MYA), the apes split from the monkeys.
There are several well-known Miocene apes, whih paradoxically makes it
harder, rather than easier, to determine which of them is the most
likely [monkey+ape] MRCA. This is especially true of the middle
Miocene (18-11 MYA or so). Andrew Hill and colleagues (as mentioned
in Scientific American 30 August 1999) have presented the genus
Equatorius (formerly Kenyapithecus africanus) which is as good a
candidate for the ape/Old World monkey split as I've seen. (See
http://www.sciam.com/explorations/1999/083099bones/) Of course
again, there is no way to know for certain which species of this
genus, as opposed to a closely related but currently undiscovered one,
is "the" ancestor, or even if that species lived immediately before or
shortly after the split. Nevertheless, it was around that time, and
if it wasn't E. africanus, it was probably a close relative.

The late Miocene apes are a complete morass right now; there've been
dozens of proposed relationships, none of which has garnered wide,
much less general acceptance. Again, the reason for this is an
"embarassment of riches." We simply have so much stuff from this
period that we're having trouble organising it all. Most
paleoanthropologists and paleoprimatologists agree that Ramapithecus
is really Sivapithecus, and Gigantopithecus is a sister group. One of
these (probably Sivapith..) is ancestral to the modern orang-utans.
Dryopithecus and Ouranopithecus are both candidates for ancestors of
Hominoids. It was around this time (maybe 10-12 MYA) that the gorilla
line split from the human+chimp group, so this is where we should look
for that MRCA. One interesting possibility is Motopithecus, but
this genus is known from pretty fragmentary evidence so far, and the
teeth look a bit more gorilla-like than human like. Besides, it's a
"mere" 8 million years old, so it's probably on the gorilla side of
the split, or a closely related sister group.

Pliocene apes are less well known, presumably because the climate of
Africa and south Asia (where they lived at the time) was less suitable
to fossilisation than earlier. Climate became much warmer and wetter,
which caused forests to spread, and as others have mentioned, forests
are generally unsuitable for fossil formation ("diagenesis"). The
soil in lush, wet forests tends to be much more acidic, which causes
rapid bone decomposition (although in some anaerobic conditions,
highly acidic deposits can preserve "soft" tissue, and I always hope
that we'll some day find some of the "squishy parts" of our Pliocene
ancestors; wouldn't that be great?)
It's too bad that we don't know the Pliocene apes better, because it's
around this time that our ancestors split from the ancestors of the
chimps. Others have mentioned Ardipithecus ramidus, and Orrorin
tugenensis also looks like a possibility. Tragically, we don't yet
have anything that might be the MRCA of Pan paniscus and P.
troglodytes, but we keep finding new stuff on "our" side of that
split, pretty much every year. Much of it is detailed in the fossil
hominid FAQ at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/

Post of the Month Honorable Mention: March 2002

"Victor Eijkhout" <eijkhout@cs.utk.edu> wrote in message
news:1f9cjsf.1y3evbp1kvs0abN%eijkhout@cs.utk.edu...
> David Tamang <sillyghost@lycos.com> wrote:
>
> > Actually, resistance to antibiotics comes about by a fundamental change in
> > the bacteria's genome through external mechanisms such as viral DNA
> > incorporation or plasmid transfer.
>
> And can you convincingly make the case that this is not a
> white-vs-black-moth phenom, the resistant bacteria already existing, but
> now suddenly getting selected since the rest is killed off by
> antibiotics?
>
> V.

Yes, actually. First, because you obviously don't understand plasmid and
other mechanisms of genetic transfer in bacteria, I suggest you do some
background reading. You will find a college level textbook to have the
necessary information on plasmid transfer. Information concerning viral
incorporation of new traits will have to be found in a new, graduate level
text as useful material in this context is only 5-7 years old or so. I
suggest Molecular Cell Biology, 4th Ed. by Lodish, Berk, et al., published
by Freeman Press. For one of the newest methods of genetic modification in
bacteria, pathogenicity islands, you have to go to professional journals as
the material is too recent to have been published in any texts, I believe. I
suggest the following articles:

I'm not sure if these are accessible on the internet for free or not. But
you can get them if you go to your local university.

Now, to answer your question. There are two fundamental differences between
the moth wing business and genetic resistance in bacteria. Concerning moth
phenotypes, the genetic expression is based on Mendelian principles, that is
incomplete dominance, multiple alleles, interacting recessive/dominant traits,
etc. This provides for horizontal evolution, but not vertical evolution, and
I think this is the point you're getting at. The key aspect of Mendelian
genetics, however, is that the genes necessary to express any of the
possible phenotypes are present in all of the organisms of a given species.
It's merely a question of selective pressures determining the frequency of
which alleles get expressed.

In regard to bacterial resistance to antibiotics, the genetic material
necessary to code for proteins facilitating the removal of antibiotics from
the microbe is not encoded in the DNA of the bacterium. In fact, in colonies
of non-resistant bacteria, there is no genetic modification to produce
strains resistant and all will die out. However, if you introduce plasmids
containing resistant genes to a colony of bacteria, they will incorporate
this genetic material into their own genome and produce the proteins that
prevent antibiotic effectiveness.

This incorporation of genetic material operates outside Mendelian laws and
in theory can result in vertical evolution of single celled organisms. In
fact, it's one of the strongest arguments for observation of macro evolution
on a micro time scale.

Exactly how these new strands of DNA support genetic modification with
regard to enhancing bacteria survival characteristics is not known at this
time. What we do know is that the sequences are not present in the genome
before incorporation. Fully sequenced genomes in E. coli, a model organism
for these types of studies, have shown the absence of new genes found after
assimilation of genetic material from external sources.

It has been suggested that interaction between viruses and bacteria is more
involved than we originally thought. Researchers propose that viruses, after
hijacking the biomechanical machinery in a cell, will modify the genetic
code to include these advantageous traits. It's assumed the benefit of this
is the virus gets to hang around longer in the bacteria and make more copies
of itself while the bacteria gets genetic variation that can be quite
advantageous. There is no proposed mechanism for this event that I am aware
of.

The Pathogenicity Islands have shown to modify characteristics of organism so
radically, they can change benign E. coli normally found in intestinal flora
into a toxin-producing pathogen resulting in acute gastritis. The complete
mechanism for this is not known either, but studies have shown entire genetic
sequences between the P.island have translocated. This is a radical change
in the genome. Apparently, the enzymes necessary to do the splicing are
encoded by the islands themselves and read the original sequences. A paper
was published in November of last year showing that this phenomena occurs in V.
cholerae as well.

This is a quick overview of a couple common ways bacteria demonstrate
potential for vertical evolutionary change. If you peruse the reading I
suggested, you should be able to find more complete descriptions of what's
going on the molecular/chemical level.

>> So mg, where is your analysis of my shallow commentary. I gave a
>> specific example that showed that Dembski was full of baloney. Apply
>> his filter to the antibody system and what do you get? You seem to be
>> the self appointed expert and since Dembski isn't around to enlighten
>> us why don't you show us how the filter works for the antibody system.
>> Why hasn't Dembski done it? If you were Dembski wouldn't you want to
>> apply your ideas to a real biological system?
>
>[snip]
>
>So what's the urgency, Ron?
>
>Basic, groundbreaking research and conceptual development
>can't be required to satisfy the tyranny of the urgent.
>
>All things in good time.

This actually brings up an important question: with the entire body of
ID work at a very primitive state, as even its proponents acknowledge,
why is there such a massive rush to cram ID into the schools?

Even if we accept at face value the claims made by the Design camp,
that ID represents a legitimate, promising avenue of scientific
research, the conclusion that this avenue is at present largely
unexplored is unavoidable. In fact, many of the key players in the ID
community admit that their speculations are not yet well supported by
empirical data, and that more research is needed.

One good example of this is given by Dembski in his introduction to
Mere Creation: Science, Faith, and Intelligent Design (1998):

"Intelligent design is a fledgling science. Even so,
intelligent design is a fledgling of enormous promise.
Many books and articles are in the pipeline. I predict
that in the next five years intelligent design will be
sufficiently developed to deserve funding from the
National Science Foundation." (p29)

So, even according to one of the driving forces behind the movement,
ID is still likely over a year away from being ready for initial
public funding. Why, then, is there a massive rush to teach this
'fledgling' in the public schools right now?

If the proponents of the design speculation actually intended to
pursue their ideas as purely scientific concepts, one would expect
them to focus on doing the necessary research to advance their
hypothesis. In fact, such primary research has been at best uncommon,
and the proponents have instead concentrated their time on politically
advancing their cause as an opponent to 'Darwinism'.

This is not the behavior expected of scientists. Others have had their
ideas mocked and have later been vindicated. Proponents of sea-floor
spreading, for example, were not initially taken seriously. Rather
than interrupt their research to try to convince school boards to
teach their ideas, they continued to amass and publish convincing
evidence. Once their theory was well established, it began to be
included in textbooks and taught in classes. That is the way science
and education have always worked -- high school texts typically lag
behind undergraduate texts, which also tend to be several years behind
the cutting edge. This is a safety factor which is built in to
education -- much of the research which initially appears to be highly
promising later turns out to be a dud. Having a lag between this
material and the basic, introductory-level courses keeps beginning
students from being confused by rapidly changing materials.

The behavior of the ID movement is inconsistent with the legitimate
advancement of scientific research. It is, however, what would be
expected from a group designed to provide support to opponents of
evolution. The vast bulk of the material published by IDers focuses on
the supposed weaknesses and inconsistencies in their opponent's
theory. Very little work has been done which provides direct support
for their position, and less of that has been supported by actual
original research. If the ID movement is a smokescreen, we should
expect to see more of the same. Certainly, we should not expect to see
any original research in the biological sciences performed by IDers
which has the slightest potential to falsify their position. As a
political movement, they have little to gain and everything to lose by
taking such risks.